30/08/2024
“You cannot be for everyone and it’s unhealthy to continue trying.”
✨️The price of being authentic is belonging. And the price of belonging is authenticity.
“Do you really want to remain friends with people whose love for you is conditional?”
✨️Yes. Because then I’ll have friends.
Therapy is funny because you begin to observe your behaviors as a third party. Watching myself, I notice that my battle is not to “be authentic.” My battle is to feel safe.
Conflict doesn’t feel uncomfortable, it feels dangerous. Disagreements aren’t just challenging, they’re frightening.
It’s not just that I want people to play nicely in the sandbox. It’s that our sandbox is sitting on a bomb, the ecosystyem is delicate, and it’s up to me to keep us all alive.
When Kyle and I first started dating, he noticed and challenged this in me. He noticed how quickly I would switch masks in the presence of different groups of people and questioned aloud to me why? Why did I have multiple personalities catered to fit the mold of those around me? And it made me mad. SO hurt and frustrated and angry. Even then, in the depths of the mental mess, I wondered why this seemingly fair observation hit SUCH a strong nerve.
I’m only just now uncovering the reason: He wasn’t challenging my authenticity, he was inadvertently challenging the unstable barricade of facades I’d erected in order to survive this scary world.
I wasn’t reacting out of offense. I was reacting out of fear. I wanted to belong. I needed to belong. It is very scary and lonely to not belong. I didn’t mask to be “fake.” I masked to survive. It is frightening to be authentic because it holds potential energy for rejection. Disagreements and arguments feel inherently dangerous, so I’ve avoided interactions in which there is potential to be challenged. I associate authenticity with loss and exclusion. If I isolate myself, then nobody can reject me—and I daresay the people who fully know me are less than I can count on one hand. And that’s not their fault.